What is the eligibility level for participants in this moot court?

The Jordan Digital Violence Against Women Moot Court is open to college-level participants.

What is the format of the competition?

The event is a national Jordanian moot court, implying a simulated court setting where participants present legal arguments.

Jordan Digital Violence Against Women Moot Court 2026

Apr 8–9, 2026Amman, JordanIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

The Jordan Digital Violence Against Women Moot Court is a national Jordanian moot court competition held in Amman, JOR. This event focuses on legal issues surrounding digital violence against women, providing a platform for college-level participants to engage with complex legal frameworks and present arguments in a simulated court setting. The competition is designed to foster legal expertise and advocacy skills in a critical area of contemporary human rights.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

Jordan

Jordan is actively addressing digital violence against women through legal and educational initiatives.

Role in topic

As the host country, JOR is at the forefront of this discussion, demonstrating a commitment to developing legal expertise in digital rights and gender equality. The competition itself is a national event, reflecting local efforts to combat digital violence against women.

United States

The United States supports international efforts to combat digital violence and promote human rights online.

Role in topic

The USA often provides support for initiatives that promote human rights and rule of law globally, including those addressing gender-based violence and cybercrime. Its legal frameworks and technological advancements contribute to the broader discourse on digital rights.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is a proponent of international cooperation to address online harms and protect vulnerable groups.

Role in topic

The GBR has been active in developing legislation and policies to combat online abuse and protect individuals from digital violence. Its legal precedents and advocacy for international standards could inform arguments presented in the moot court.

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

Digital Violence Against Women and Girls

Digital violence against women and girls (often abbreviated TF-GBV, technology-facilitated gender-based violence) emerged as a recognized human-rights concern in the 2010s as smartphone penetration, social media, and messaging platforms reshaped public and private life. Abuses include non-consensual intimate image distribution ('image-based sexual abuse'), cyberstalking, doxxing, sextortion, online harassment campaigns, deepfake pornography, and intimate-partner surveillance through stalkerware. The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women issued a landmark report in 2018 (A/HRC/38/47) framing online violence as a continuum of offline gender-based violence, and the 2023 update highlighted generative-AI harms. In the Arab region, studies by UN Women and ESCWA show particularly high prevalence — frequently above 60% of women internet users reporting some form of online abuse — compounded by 'honor'-based social consequences that can escalate digital harms into physical violence or femicide. Jordan amended its Cybercrimes Law in 2023 (Law No. 17 of 2023), introducing tougher penalties for online defamation, blackmail, and content that 'violates public morals,' though civil-society groups have warned the law's broad terms can also chill speech. Today the debate centers on how to craft legal frameworks that effectively criminalize TF-GBV — including AI-generated abuse — while preserving free expression, ensuring victim-centered remedies, securing platform accountability, and harmonizing cross-border investigation and takedown procedures.

Key players

Cybercrime

International cybercrime governance has been shaped for two decades by the Council of Europe's 2001 Budapest Convention, which 76 states have ratified and which sets baseline offences (illegal access, data and system interference, computer-related fraud) and cross-border evidence-sharing tools. Russia and several developing states long objected to the Budapest process as Western-led, and in 2019 the UN General Assembly (Resolution 74/247, sponsored by Russia) launched negotiations for a new global treaty. After five years of contentious Ad Hoc Committee sessions in Vienna and New York, the UN Convention against Cybercrime was adopted by consensus in December 2024 and opened for signature in Hanoi in 2025. The new treaty criminalizes core cyber-dependent offences and ICT-facilitated crimes including online child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate imagery, and it creates a 24/7 network and expedited preservation regime. Human-rights organizations, tech companies, and many Western states have voiced concern that its broad investigative powers and vague 'serious crime' threshold could enable transnational surveillance and prosecution of journalists and dissidents. Arab states, including Jordan, largely supported the treaty as a tool for cross-border evidence gathering relevant to fraud, extortion, and gender-based online abuses. The current legal-practice questions include: how domestic cybercrime statutes should incorporate treaty obligations; how to balance investigative speed (preservation, real-time interception) with due-process and proportionality safeguards; and how to ensure mutual legal assistance functions in practice for victims of digital violence.

Key players

Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based violence (GBV) entered international law as a distinct category through CEDAW (1979), General Recommendation 19 (1992), and the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. Regional instruments followed: the Belém do Pará Convention (1994) in the Americas, the Maputo Protocol (2003) in Africa, and the Istanbul Convention (2011) in Europe. The WHO estimates that roughly one in three women globally experiences physical or sexual violence in her lifetime, with intimate-partner violence the most common form. In the MENA region, GBV jurisprudence has evolved unevenly. Jordan repealed Article 308 of its Penal Code in 2017, ending the 'marry-your-rapist' loophole, and passed a Protection from Family Violence Law (No. 15 of 2017) creating protection orders and specialized prosecution units. Tunisia's 2017 Organic Law 58 remains the most comprehensive Arab statute on violence against women, while several Gulf states have introduced family-protection laws since 2019. Despite these advances, conviction rates remain low, 'honor' defenses persist in mitigation pleas in some jurisdictions, and shelter and forensic infrastructures are underfunded. The contemporary frontier is the integration of GBV with digital harms — recognizing that online stalking, image-based abuse, and coercive surveillance are often part of an escalating pattern with offline intimate-partner violence — and ensuring that prosecutors, judges, and protection orders treat digital and physical violence as a single continuum.

Key players

Legal Practice and Procedure in Digital VAW Cases

Prosecuting digital violence against women raises distinct procedural challenges that traditional criminal procedure codes were not designed to handle. Offences are often transnational — perpetrator, victim, and platform server may sit in three jurisdictions — implicating mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), the Budapest Convention's Article 32 on cross-border access, and the new UN Cybercrime Convention's preservation requests. Victims frequently lack the technical capacity to preserve evidence before content disappears, while platforms operate under varying transparency and disclosure regimes (e.g., the EU Digital Services Act 2022, the UK Online Safety Act 2023, and US Stored Communications Act constraints). In Jordan and across the Arab region, specialized cybercrime units within the Public Security Directorate handle initial complaints, but prosecutors and judges often lack training on digital forensics, victim-centered interviewing, and trauma-informed procedure. The UNODC and UN Women have promoted model 'essential services packages' integrating police, prosecution, judiciary, health, and social services, and the Bangkok and Latimer House principles inform regional judicial training. Standing, victim anonymity, protective orders restraining further dissemination, and the use of expert testimony on online dynamics are recurring procedural battlegrounds. The moot-court frontier today concerns the admissibility and authentication of social-media records, the scope of compelled platform disclosure, the use of pseudonymity for complainants, and the calibration of remedies — criminal penalties, civil damages, and platform-level takedown orders — for cumulative online and offline harms.

Key players

Digital Evidence

Digital evidence has become central to almost every category of criminal litigation, but its admissibility frameworks remain fragmented. The foundational principles — authenticity, integrity, chain of custody, and reliability — were codified in standards like ISO/IEC 27037 (2012) on identification and preservation, ISO/IEC 27041–27043 on investigation processes, and the Council of Europe's Electronic Evidence Guide (2013, updated 2020). The Budapest Convention pioneered expedited preservation orders (Articles 16–17) and production orders (Article 18), provisions largely carried into the 2024 UN Cybercrime Convention. In the Arab region, courts have increasingly accepted screenshots, server logs, metadata, and forensic images, but standards vary on hashing, write-blocker use, and the qualifications of expert witnesses. Jordan's Evidence Law and its 2023 Cybercrimes Law together permit electronic evidence, and the Public Security Directorate maintains a digital forensics laboratory accredited to international standards. Cloud storage, end-to-end encryption, and ephemeral messaging (Snapchat, Signal disappearing messages) create acute preservation problems, particularly in TF-GBV cases where victims may delete content or perpetrators destroy devices. Emerging issues include the authentication of AI-generated content (deepfakes), the evidentiary weight of platform-generated trust-and-safety reports, cross-border production orders under the EU e-Evidence Regulation (2023) and the US CLOUD Act (2018), and the protection of victim privacy when intimate material itself constitutes the evidence — requiring sealed records, in-camera review, and strict prosecutorial handling protocols.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Jordan Digital Violence Against Women Moot Court 2026, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)Committee on the Status of Women in India (Towards Equality Report 1974)Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Cybercrime Gender Budget Statement (Statement 13)

Frequently asked questions

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Jordan Digital Violence Against Women Moot Court 2026

Apr 8–9, 2026Amman, JordanIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

Jordan

Jordan is actively addressing digital violence against women through legal and educational initiatives.

Role in topic

United States

The United States supports international efforts to combat digital violence and promote human rights online.

Role in topic

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is a proponent of international cooperation to address online harms and protect vulnerable groups.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

Digital Violence Against Women and Girls

Key players

Cybercrime

Key players

Gender-Based Violence

Key players

Legal Practice and Procedure in Digital VAW Cases

Key players

Digital Evidence

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Jordan Digital Violence Against Women Moot Court 2026, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Frequently asked questions

Explore more conferences

Browse all Moot Court conferences